It is a problem in the field of recharging systems for vehicles that are equipped with electrically powered propulsion systems to bill the vehicle operator for energy consumption where the Electric Power Grid is used as the source of power to charge the vehicular battery banks. Presently, each outlet that is served by a local utility company is connected to the Electric Power Grid by an electric meter which measures the energy consumption of the loads that are connected to the outlet. The utility company bills the owner of the premises at which the outlet is installed for the total energy consumption for a predetermined time interval, typically monthly. Recharging a vehicle which is equipped with an electrically powered propulsion system results in the premises owner errantly being billed for the recharging and the vehicle owner not being billed at all. An exception to this scenario is where the premises owner is paid a flat fee by the vehicle owner for the use of the outlet to recharge the vehicular battery banks.
Electric transportation modes typically take the form of either a pure battery solution where the battery powers an electric propulsion system, or a hybrid solution where a fossil fuel powered engine supplements the vehicle's battery bank to either charge the electric propulsion system or directly drive the vehicle. Presently, there is no electricity re-fueling paradigm where a vehicle can plug in to the “Electric Power Grid” while parked at a given destination and then recharge with sufficient energy stored in the vehicular battery banks to make the trip home or to the next destination. More to the point, the present “grid paradigm” is always “grid-centric”; that is, the measurement and billing for the sourced electricity is always done on the grid's supply side by the utility itself. One example of a system that represents this philosophy is the “municipal parking meter apparatus” where an electric meter and credit card reader is installed at every parking meter along a city's streets to directly bill vehicle owners for recharging their vehicular battery banks. Not only is this system very expensive to implement, but it remains highly centralized and is certainly not ubiquitous.
Thus, the inherent problems with the present centralized vehicular charging architecture include:                infrastructure cost,        lack of ubiquity in the infrastructure's extent,        extensive time to deploy a nationwide system,        can't manage/control access to electricity without a per outlet meter,        no ubiquity of billing for downloaded electricity,        no method to assure a given utility is properly paid,        no method to provide revenue sharing business models,        no methods to manage and prevent fraud,        incapable of instantaneous load management during peak loads,        incapable of load management on a block by block, sector by sector load, or city-wide basis, and        incapable of billing the energy “downloaded” to a given vehicle, where a given vehicle is random in its extent, and where the vehicle is plugged into the grid is also random in its extent.        
What is needed is a solution that can be deployed today, that doesn't require a whole new infrastructure to be constructed, is ubiquitous in its extent, and offers complete control by the utility to manage a delivered load; that is, a system that is low in cost and low in deployment risk where any vehicle and any utility can easily be integrated into the Central Load Management architecture proposed herein.
The above-noted patent applications: U.S. application Ser. No. 12/329,349 titled “Self-Identifying Power Source For Use In Recharging Vehicles Equipped With Electrically Powered Propulsion Systems” filed 5 Dec. 2008, and U.S. application Ser. No. 12/329,368 titled “System For On-Board Metering Of Recharging Energy Consumption In Vehicles Equipped With Electrically Powered Propulsion Systems” filed 5 Dec. 2008, and U.S. application Ser. No. 12/329,389 titled “Network For Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting Of Recharging Processes For Vehicles Equipped With Electrically Powered Propulsion Systems” filed 5 Dec. 2008 collectively describe an E-Grid concept for use in providing power to vehicles which include a propulsion system powered, at least in part, by electric power, at least some of which is stored onboard the vehicle in an electric power storage apparatus.
A key element of the conceptual “E-Grid” is not unlike the problem faced by early cellular telephone operators and subscribers. When a cellular subscriber “roamed” out of their home “network”, they couldn't make phone calls, or making phone calls was either extremely cumbersome or expensive or both. Similarly, when a vehicle drives out of their home area, there needs to be a process for allowing seamless charging of the vehicle battery banks and billing for the recharging with a “foreign” or non-home utility. The E-Grid architecture has a centralized billing structure that manages the “roaming” vehicle as it “self-charges” at virtually any power source/electric outlet in a seamless yet ubiquitous manner anywhere a given utility is connected to the “E-Grid architecture”. This includes the full AAA functionality as shown in the “Utility Service Center”—Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting.
A key component of the E-Grid architecture is to place the “electric meter” in the vehicle itself to eliminate the need to modify the Electric Power Grid. The Self-Identifying Power Source provides the vehicle's electric meter with a unique identification of the power source to enable the vehicle to report both the vehicle's energy consumption and the point at which the energy consumption occurred to the utility company via the ubiquitous communications network.
An advantage of this architecture is that the vehicle is in communication with the utility company, which can implement highly dynamic load management, where any number of vehicles can be “disconnected” and “re-connected” to the Electric Power Grid to easily manage peak load problems for geographic areas as small as a city block or as large as an entire city or even a regional area. The Centralized Vehicle Load Management System is bi-directional in its nature—in that the batteries could be used as load peak power sources for the utility—which would be significantly less expensive than building a peaking plant that is used, for example. at 0.1% per year.
The “E-Grid” architecture enables a vehicle to plug in anywhere, “self-charge”, and be billed in a seamless fashion, regardless of the utility, regardless of the vehicle, regardless of the location, regardless of the time. The utility for that given downloaded charge receives credit for the electricity “downloaded” across their network, whether that customer is a “home” customer or a “roaming” customer. The “owner” of the electrical outlet receives credit for the power consumed from their “electrical outlet”. In addition, if a given customer has not paid their E-Grid bill, the system can directly manage access to the grid to include rejecting the ability to charge or only allowing a certain charge level to enable someone to get home. The E-Grid architecture can have account managed billing, pre-paid, and post-paid billing paradigms. The billing is across any number of electric utility grids, and the E-Grid architecture is completely agnostic to how many utility suppliers there are or where they are located. So too, the E-grid architecture is agnostic to the charging location, where said charging location does not require a meter and does not require telecommunications capability.
The compelling societal benefit of the E-Grid architecture is that it is possible to deploy it today without a major change in present infrastructure or requiring new infrastructure. Virtually every electrical outlet, no matter where located, can be used to charge a vehicle, with the bill for that charge going directly to the given consumer, with the owner of the electrical outlet getting a corresponding credit, with the payment for electricity going directly to the utility that provided the energy—all in a seamless fashion.
One problem faced by the E-Grid is that typically a number of vehicles arrive at a destination in close temporal proximity, connect to the power sources served by one or more service disconnects, and concurrently request service. Once their batteries are charged, there is no load placed on the service disconnects until these vehicles depart and other vehicles arrive to be recharged. Given this high demand scenario, each service disconnect can serve only a limited number of vehicles at a time if they concurrently demand the delivery of power, and an electric substation can only serve a limited number of vehicles which are served by the service disconnects connected to the electric substation. This is a peak load issue, where the existing service disconnects are unable to manage a plurality of concurrently received requests for service and, therefore, are limited in the number of vehicles that can be served and cumulatively can cause overloads at the electric substation level or elsewhere within the E-Grid.